ADRIAN, Michigan-What began as a doctoral project at the University of Michigan is now spreading like red clover across the Great Lakes region to help farmers improve their soil and prevent fertilizer from washing into waterways.
Although it took root at a research university, the program's growth has been supported by hundreds of fields owned by farmers like David Halsey of Adrian. Halsey and his peers have enlisted their fields as living labs and partnered with experts from U-M and other institutions to study a powerful but underused practice: cover cropping.
The Great Lakes Cover Crops Project officially launched about five years ago. Between then and fall 2025, more than 225 farmers from six states have enrolled nearly 600 fields in the project. Of those fields, 158 are in Michigan, the most of any state, where you can find hairy vetch, crimson clover, cereal rye and other plants growing after farmers have harvested their cash crops. The project's goal is to make cover cropping easier for growers to adopt, not only to benefit their farms, but also lessen the burden agriculture puts on neighboring ecosystems.
"I'm involved in lots of different programs, not just this one, because I want to learn as much as I can about the environment, about regenerative farming," Halsey said. "What intrigued me about this program is that the researchers are willing to come out and do studies on the field, then share that data back with farmers."
Halsey first learned about the project from Jennifer Blesh, then an associate professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, who was presenting about it at an event for farmers. A doctoral student on Blesh's research team, Etienne Sutton, was spearheading the project and, with support from the nonprofit Michigan Agricultural Advancement, the team was recruiting farmers to help collect data on cover cropping practices.
Cover crops offer a bounty of attractive benefits, but realizing their full potential is a complex challenge for farmers, dependent on a host of variables. It's so complex, in fact, that most farmers don't use cover crops.
Finding the best mix of cover crops to plant, along with the best time and method to seed them for a given field's soil type and climate, places a huge demand on any individual farmer. But with the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project, farmers aren't on their own. They're connected to a network of researchers and other farmers who are sharing experiences and information with each other.
"I think it's a total win-win," Halsey said. "We all learn together."
After building momentum over the past several years, the project has compiled an extensive cover crop database to help shine light on different cover cropping approaches. And that data is helping farmers make more informed decisions on their fields. For example, the project has shown that a mix of several cover crops tends to provide more benefits than a single species. And this summer, the team will launch a prototype app with support from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency that will deliver farmers real-time data and insights about their cover crops.
Armor for farmers
There are a lot of reasons Halsey partnered with the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project after hearing Blesh's presentation. For one, like he said, he cares about the environment.
Even before joining, he had received state and federal certifications for the ecofriendly practices he uses on Halsey Farms. He and his wife started the farm with two acres about 30 years ago. They now grow roughly 600 acres of row crops including corn, wheat and beans.
"We didn't have a plan to be this size or anything. It just kind of happened," Halsey said. "But I would say our guiding goal is to be regenerative-to have a farm that, someday, my son can take over that's in better shape than it was when I acquired it."
The Halsey family also raises show and feeder calves. To support the calves, the Halseys grow an additional 300 acres of forage crop-some of which, such as alfalfa, can also provide living plant cover in the winter months. That means there's potential for cross-pollination at Halsey Farms: Growing more robust cover crops could also support the family's calf breeding.
Still, cover crops have something to offer all farmers, not just those who are particularly eco-conscious and raising club calves. For starters, cover crops act like armor for soil, keeping it from washing away during rains, Halsey said.
"A cover crop is technically a crop you plant after your cash crop. So you harvest your corn, your beans, your wheat and then you go in and you plant another crop right away so that you have a living root in the ground 365 days a year," Halsey said. "These roots in there act like rebar that hold the soil in place."
Beyond that physical protection, cover crops also lock in chemicals like nitrogen, a component in the fertilizer used to grow cash crops. Excess nitrogen remains in the soil even after the cash crop is harvested, however, and it can easily be washed away by rain into a farm's drainage system. That drainage can then feed into nearby streams and rivers, which connect to larger bodies of water. In the Great Lakes, a consequence of that run-off is the slimy, massive and harmful algal blooms that are nourished by phosphorus and nitrogen pollution.
"As a farmer, you paid for the fertilizer and chemicals. Why would you want them to wash away?" Halsey said. "If you can keep it on your farm, it's good for the environment, it's good for your farm, it's good for your budget."
On paper, it sounds like cover crops could market themselves. But the reality is far more complicated. Although cover crops are gaining traction, farmers lack the incentives and resources to take full advantage of them. And without that motivation, farmers are more likely to simply keep doing what they've always done.
"There's a lot of interest in cover crops, but there's just too much risk for farmers with how our current agricultural system is set up. Only about 9% of farms use cover crops," said Sutton, who is now assistant director for research at the University of Missouri's Center for Regenerative Agriculture. She is, however, still based in Ann Arbor to help lead the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project.
With collaborators at Michigan State University, the University of Minnesota, Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Ohio Conservation Action Project, the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project is offering farmers support and resources to change that.
An outside-the-box approach
After completing her bachelor's degree in environmental studies at U-M, Sutton knew she wanted to pursue a doctorate in research that would help make farms more sustainable and resilient. But she also wanted to take an unconventional approach in that work.
Researchers were developing agricultural techniques that showed benefits in more conventional lab and controlled field research settings, but those benefits often don't fully materialize on real farms. That drew Sutton to Blesh's group because Blesh had been networking with farmers in the Great Lakes region to help resolve that disconnect.
"One of the things that struck us was that farmers weren't having consistent success with cover crops," said Blesh, who is now a professor at Michigan State University and maintains an adjunct appointment with U-M SEAS. "There was a lot of data showing strong cover crop performance at research stations, but in the real world, we weren't actually seeing as much growth as you would expect."
The Rackham Graduate School at U-M awarded Sutton one of its Public Scholarship Grants, which are designed to serve the public good by working with community partners-in this case, farmers. And, in the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project, that partnership means farmers are viewed as scientific collaborators. Farmers have invaluable insights on how best to tweak variables on their farms and in understanding how those changes affect outcomes. In other words, they know how to experiment and the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project not only welcomes that, but capitalizes upon it.
"We're doing some things right now that are unconventional and probably most farmers would shake their heads and say, 'What are you doing?'" Halsey said. "But Etienne's really receptive to not only helping me do it, but giving me her opinion on it."
The participation and perspectives of farmers aren't always included in conventional studies. In the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project, those are integral parts of the work and that not only benefits farmers, but the research community as well, said Julie Doll, CEO of Michigan Agriculture Advancement.
"The project really shines with its thoughtfulness in how it partners with farmers to conduct research," said Doll, who is also a member of the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project's leadership team. "The researchers really benefit from the interactions with the farmers."
In essence, the project creates feedback loops that can boost the efforts of different people working to grow food more sustainably, which is good news for everybody, Sutton said.
"This partnership between researchers and farmers is a really valuable way to produce actionable data that can improve our food system," she said. "We're able to leverage this rich knowledge that farmers already have about the land that they're managing and the ecosystems that they work in."
Having a field day
This past October, the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project held what it calls a field day in Hickory Corners, Michigan, at Michigan State University's W. K. Kellogg Biological Station, or KBS.
A field day is like a conference for the project's participants and interested parties-farmers, researchers and representatives from state and municipal agricultural offices-held at an active farming site. But it's also an encapsulation of what makes the project unique.
The perks of partnering with research institutions were front and center. The venue, KBS, is home to one of the nation's 26 Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, sites supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. It's also the only one devoted to studying the ecology of agricultural systems. Not only can attendees at the field day see what cover crops researchers are growing today, they can access three decades' worth of cover crop data.
Then, of course, there were expert presentations. Sutton spoke, as did Brook Wilke, the associate director for agronomy and science at the KBS Long-Term Agroecosystem Research site (the LTAR site was established in 2020 and is one of 19 such sites nationwide, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture). Will Brinkerhoff, a current U-M graduate student working with Blesh, also presented on integrating cover crops with livestock.
But the experts weren't speaking at or through their audience. Farmers were asking questions throughout and offering feedback and experiences with different approaches. And it wasn't just researchers who presented. Halsey got on the mic to talk about his approaches. Later in the day, the attendees from across Michigan and the Midwest talked shop with each other, swapping tips, stories and ideas.
Although less than 10% of farms are currently using cover crops, the field day showed that the practice has a foothold in the Great Lakes states. And the people involved with the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project are doing all they can to grow that number.
"I would describe the Great Lakes Cover Crops Project as being very intensive and very thorough. It's more in-depth than any other project I've been involved in," Halsey said. "For that reason, I think that it's going to be more beneficial."
